Catch Up Premium

The literacy and numeracy catch-up premium gives state-funded schools, including special schools and alternative provision settings, additional funding to support Year 7 pupils who did not achieve the expected standard in reading or maths at the end of Key Stage 2. This is defined as a national scaled score of less than 100 in both reading and maths.

Academies receiving the funding must publish details of how they spend the funding and the effect it has had on the attainment of those pupils who attract it. This includes:

How much catch-up premium allocation was received for the current financial year

The school's plans for spending the allocation

How the previous year's allocation was spent

How the spending made a difference to the attainment of pupils who attracted the premium and how you assessed the effect it had

Thomas Clarkson Academy received approximately £35,000 funding to support students that had not met the expected standard at Key Stage 2 to ensure they catch up and make accelerated progress.

In 2017/18, 68 of our 240 Year 7 students (28%) had scaled scores of less than 100 in both reading and maths.

Catch-up Premium Spending plans 2018-2019

Based on our review of spending in 2017-18 Thomas Clarkson Academy is planning to allocate its funding to support the following areas:

Maths:

Strategy

Chosen action/approach

Rationale

Ensuring effectiveness
of implementation

Mathswatch

Annual subscription to Mathswatch online maths skills programme.

Regular use of core skills important to ensure understanding develops. Supporting through an online platform engages students. Platform adapts to use of students to ensure challenge.

Maths KS3 Lead, Assistant Principal KS3

Teaching Assistant support

Identified students work in tutor time on rolling programme of short support sessions during registration.

Raises profile of importance of core skills (maths), builds confidence and provides close support for students less confident with numeracy.

RSL Year 7, Maths KS3 Lead, Assistant Principal KS3

Focussed Teaching

Small groups for low-ability lessons.

Additional class in maths funded to allow for smaller group teaching to weakest students.

Subject Lead – Maths, Maths KS3 Lead.

Fund HTLA Maths

Continue to support funding HLTA appointed in 2018 to support Y7 students.

Teaching to Y7 students in maths that are weakest is working with an attainment level at the edges of staff at TCA experience. To better meet needs of students and develop capacity across maths team, HLTA to continue to be funded.

SL Maths, Maths KS3 Lead.

Pearson Scheme of Learning

Subscription and resources purchased – with specific resources for less able students.

Procuring Key Stage course from Pearsons ensured maths had appropriate scheme of learning in place. It met the needs of the maths team at TCA by providing a range of resources differentiated by ability, suitable for students at lower end, as well as stretch tasks.

Resources procured to support teaching and explanation of key concepts physically as well as in written form. By broadening resources available for staff to support a range of learning styles lessons better match students’ needs.

SL Maths, Maths KS3 Lead

English:

Strategy

Chosen action/approach

Rationale

Ensuring
effectiveness
of implementation

Accelerated Reader – subscription

Accelerated Reader supports and tracks development or reading and reading comprehension by guiding students’ reading and then testing them on their understanding of the reading they have done.

Additional class in English funded to allow for smaller group teaching to weakest students

Subject Lead – English, English KS3 Lead

TLR - promote and improve literacy skills

TLR payment in place to develop literacy at KS3.

Literacy is a crucial element of school improvement at TCA and central to students that need to ‘catch up’. This is within English but also across the curriculum.

Assistant Principal KS3

TLR - promote and improve teaching and learning in KS3

TLR payment in place to develop teaching and learning (in English) at KS3.

Appropriate teaching differentiated for students – specifically in this case lower ability in English – is key intervention for targeted students. Development and promotion of best practice specifically with our younger students eligible for this funding supported by this targeted TLR.

Subject Lead – English, English KS3 Lead

Resource Procurement – supporting access

Purchase resources supporting students not yet at expected level in accessing key texts.

Weaker students need support to access key texts and develop ability to access resources allowing them to catch up and access curriculum in line with peers.

Developing vocabulary is crucial for students that have not got the broad vocabulary required to access age related curriculum expectation. Bedrock Learning is an online platform accessible via any internet enabled device including mobile phones that supports and promotes vocabulary.

Literacy Coordinator, Assistant Principal KS3

Catch-up Premium Spending 2017-2018: Review

Maths:

Strategy

Chosen action/
Rapproach

Rationale

Ensuring effectiveness
of implementation

Review

Continue in 2018/19?

Mathswatch

Annual subscription to Mathswatch online maths skills programme

Regular use of core skills important to ensure understanding develops. Supporting through an online platform engages students. Platform adapts to use of students to ensure challenge.

Maths KS3 Lead, Assistant Principal KS3

Usage varied between classes linked to regularity of monitoring. When used it had positive impact engaging students that didn’t like more traditional paper based homework/support sheets.

Yes

Teaching Assistant support

Identified students work in tutor time on rolling programme of short support sessions during registration

Raises profile of importance of core skills (maths), builds confidence and provides close support for students less confident with numeracy

RSL Year 7, Maths KS3 Lead, Assistant Principal KS3

Initial roll out was effective but needs to be continued with frequency adapted based upon progress to ensure impact focusses on students making less progress.

Yes – with more regular impact review and subsequently adaptive support

Focussed Teaching

Small groups for low-ability lessons

Additional class in maths funded to allow for smaller group teaching to weakest students

Subject Lead – Maths, Maths KS3 Lead.

This is a key support for students at TCA. Staff to student ratio allows for focussed, in depth, and more personalised teaching specifically meeting individual needs.

Yes

HLTA appointment

New HLTA appointed to support Y7 students

Teaching to Y7 students in maths that are weakest is working with an attainment level at the edges of staff at TCA experience. To better meet needs of students and develop capacity across maths team HLTA to be appointed.

SL Maths, Maths KS3 Lead

Appointment made and HLTA used extensively to support Accelerated Learning group.

Appointment now made so no additional appointment of second HLTA this year. This year focus on wider range of students.

Pearson Scheme of Learning

Subscription and resources purchased – with specific resources for less able students

Procuring Key Stage course from Pearsons ensured maths had appropriate scheme of learning in place. It met the needs of the maths team at TCA by providing a range of resources differentiated by ability, suitable for students at lower end, as well as stretch tasks.

SL Maths, Maths KS3 Lead

Initial procurement successful in providing core resources. Over course of year these have been further adapted by maths team and brought into line with school assessment.

Resources procured to support teaching and explanation of key concepts physically as well as in written form. By broadening resources available for staff to support a range of learning styles lessons better match students’ needs

SL Maths, Maths KS3 Lead

Continuing development of maths resources led to improved differentiation in classes with less able students. Best practice needs to be shared across maths team to broaden use and subsequently effectiveness

Yes

English:

Strategy

Chosen action/
approach

Rationale

Ensuring effectiveness of implementation

Review

Continue in 2018/19?

Accelerated Reader – subscription

Accelerated Reader supports and tracks development or reading and reading comprehension by guiding students reading and then testing them on their understanding of the reading they have done.

Accelerated reader has been developed over the year and now forms core part of English curriculum with subscription and curriculum time given to it. Guided access to our library is crucially important for our context serving an area of severe deprivation.

Yes - Next steps are to further develop best practice to ensure staff consistently make use of its potential. This year the tutor team for Year are to develop their use of the scheme to support the English team and students that need the most support.

Focussed Teaching

Small groups for low-ability lessons

Additional class in English funded to allow for smaller group teaching to weakest students.

Subject Lead – English, English KS3 Lead

This is a key support for students at TCA. Staff to student ratio allows for focussed, in depth, and more personalised teaching specifically meeting individual needs.

TLR - promote and improve literacy skills

TLR payment in place to develop literacy at KS3

Literacy is a crucial element of school improvement at TCA and central to students that need to ‘catch up’. This is within English but also across the curriculum.

Assistant Principal KS3

Whole school INSET delivered by TLR and literacy embedded into Teaching and Learning via changes to schemes of learning.

Yes – initial developments have raised status of literacy, supporting weaker students accessing the curriculum, improving their subject vocabulary and exposure to a wider range of vocabulary and literacy, which has fed back into English.

TLR - promote and improve teaching and learning in KS3

TLR payment in place to develop teaching and learning (in English) at KS3

Appropriate teaching differentiated for students – specifically in this case lower ability in English – is key intervention for targeted students. Development, and promotion of best practice specifically with our younger students eligible for this funding supported by this targeted TLR.

Subject Lead – English, English KS3 Lead

Development of Schemes of Learning at Key Stage used as best practice across school. Setting appropriate, challenging work with suitable support, in line with whole school KS3 assessment framework has been central to positive progress of ‘catch up funding’ students.

Yes – Further developing teaching and learning in English.

Resource Procurement – supporting access

Purchase resources supporting students not yet at expected level in accessing key texts.

Weaker students need support to access key texts and develop ability to access resources allowing them to catch up and access curriculum in line with peers

Subject Lead – English, English KS3 Lead.

YES - English purchased additional copies of Year 7 texts - 'The Tempest' with images and annotations to aid comprehension and purchased a play version of 'Frankenstein' to make 19th Century texts more accessible

Catch-up Premium Spending 2017-2018: Impact

To assess the impact of the additional funding we look at the relative progress of the identified students.

At Thomas Clarkson Academy we set GCSE targets for our students in line with national outcomes and judge progress towards meeting these targets.